Very this :-\ Seems like most people think the whole this is just distributed Reddit and make a bunch of assumptions mostly based around Reddit (or assumptions themselves sourced or derived from Reddit)

Also, this obsession like "number get big! Bigger number! BIG BIG NUMBER!!" is hella irritating and wrong. "More users" isn't the answer to "how do we get active niche communities" and even some of the people acting like it is will admit that only a few users even contribute. Maybe we could hope for quality instead of just blindly chasing quantity. Maybe 80k active critters (just making up a goal and some numbers here, to illustrate) isn't so much worse than 1M meme-bots and 100k active critters? Maybe this can be the place for people who are seriously interested in Community/Magazine topics and not just every bot or butthead who's heard of, say, Arduinos or volleyball or woodcraft.

In other words, instead of hoping for incidental gains by filling up with random bellends, maybe getting the ones who matter over here will leave us with a leaner environment of no less utility. ... You know, after it's been more than a couple of weeks since the initial exodus, after there's been time for any kind of community or at least thread history/catalog/collection to even develop.

I think if this is what Lemmy is intended for it’s sad and will always a niche thing. I refuse to believe that this is what Lemmy is aiming for.